Protecting Seniors' Data Act of 2025

Mr. President, I am here to ask unanimous consent on

a very simple measure to make sure that the data systems of Social Security were not compromised--that no data was exfiltrated, no bugs were infiltrated, and no back doors were left in when Elon Musk and his little gang of miscreants went into Social Security.

I will talk more about this afterward, but the chairman of the Finance Committee has elsewhere to be. So I will speak after I have offered this, and he has responded. I will go directly to my unanimous consent request.

As if in legislative session, and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of my bill, S. 1943, introduced earlier today; that the bill be considered read three times and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

These remarks would ordinarily precede the exchange we just had, but as a courtesy to the distinguished chairman of the Finance Committee, we are going a little bit out of order. I will now fill in the statement that I would have made.

Senator Crapo is obviously well aware of my concerns here. As I said at the very beginning, we have reason to believe that Elon Musk and his little gang of frat boys, tech bros, miscreants--call them the ``Muskrats,'' the ``DOGE Boys''--whatever you want. They went into Social Security with bad intent.

The cover that they went in under was they were going to look for waste, fraud, and abuse. But I think we know that the waste, fraud, and abuse veil in which the ``DOGE Boys'' wrapped themselves was a fake, because if you were actually concerned about waste, fraud, and abuse, you wouldn't fire all the inspectors general.

You would actually try to recruit the inspectors general into your so-called government efficiency effort because what inspectors general do all day is actually look for waste, fraud, and abuse.

And you could go through their files and say: Here, what are the biggest areas that we should be paying attention to?

And you would work with the inspectors general. Instead, they were fired. That whole apparatus to actually seek waste, fraud, and abuse was set aside and in came the ``DOGE Boys,'' a little bit like in ``The Cat in the Hat''--``Thing One'' and ``Thing Two''--except there were 100 more of them running around doing considerable damage to government Agencies and government systems.

And to a very significant extent, doing damage to government Agencies and systems was the point. This was not the bug. This was the feature. They went in to try to wreck stuff, and it became particularly dangerous around Social Security because, first of all, there was a propaganda campaign to talk down Social Security, to pretend, falsely, that it was riddled with fraud. That took place, including right over on the House floor, when the President came to speak to Congress and repeatedly lied about Social Security fraud.

Then you had the infiltration of people who were from tech bro world and from private equity world, exactly taking over Social Security. Then you had people talking up benefit interruptions like that was an OK thing. Well, a benefit interruption would be an excuse to go in and take over Social Security to privatize it with tech bros and with private equity people.

I think the noise that we made about that headed it off, but there remains the lingering danger that when they got into Social Security's data systems, they exfiltrated data because data has enormous value, or they infiltrated bugs to do damage to the old systems of Social Security; or, worst of all, perhaps, they left back doors so that Elon Musk or other folks who were interested in getting access to massive amounts of Americans' data can find their way into Social Security's data systems secretly.

So this is a very simple measure. It asks for an audit of Social Security data systems to make sure that those things did not happen. That really ought to be a bipartisan, if not unanimous, expression of Senate intention. That is why I hoped we could generate unanimous consent for it today.

I yield the floor to the distinguished ranking member of the Committee on Finance Senator Wyden.

Mr. President, I rise in support of his efforts. He is a valued member of the Senate Finance Committee, and this is a thoughtful approach to bring accountability at Social Security.

The legislation directs the independent nonpartisan Government Accountability Office to conduct a top-to-bottom audit of Social Security's databases and in the process, determine whether DOGE left the Agency vulnerable to cyber attacks when its agents gained unfettered access to Agency records.

Americans want to know whether the DOGE agents violated Federal privacy and cyber security laws when they accessed their personal information.

Now, I have said it once. I will repeat it again. Social Security's databases represent the Fort Knox of Americans' personal lives.

I see our friend from South Dakota here. He is a member of the Intelligence Committee. We have talked about privacy issues on a number of occasions, and privacy is what the Whitehouse legislation is all about. This whole question of the Social Security databases involves people's bank account numbers, their home addresses, work histories, salaries, medical records. The list goes on and on.

Social Security, under the direction of the DOGE-appointed Acting Commissioner, let Mr. Musk's cronies stroll in without raising a finger. It remains to be seen what is going to happen with Mr. Musk no longer leading DOGE and the new Commissioner Mr. Bisignano taking the helm at Social Security.

It is clear that DOGE accessed the original records under false pretenses, and they were claiming that there was rampant fraud throughout the Social Security program.

As the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, I have been demanding evidence from the Trump administration for some time now about the existence of all of this ``fraud.'' Social Security has refused to provide me with a single shred of evidence. That is because--

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent and my friend from South Dakota for 3 additional minutes.

Mr. President, Social Security, as I say, has refused to provide me with a shred of evidence because we already know from the Social Security watchdog that Social Security fraud--and, colleagues, this is the relevant number--represents 0.009 percent of payments.

So we have known for some time that this effort is part of the Trump plan to cut Americans' Social Security benefits. I believe the long- term objective is

to privatize the program so it can be sold off to some billionaires and he can weaponize Social Security to go after groups it wants to target.

This effort is also part of what Donald Trump, Mr. Musk, and Peter Thiel have made a broader effort all about, and that is to collect and compile a master list of personal information on each American by pulling from the IRS and the Departments of Homeland Security, Education, and Social Security.

I close by saying, thankfully, Federal courts have slowed DOGE's access to Social Security records for now. But the fact is, there needs to be a comprehensive understanding of the damage to make sure Americans' data is protected. That is why Senator Whitehouse's legislation is so important. I urge its passage.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I rise today to discuss Senator Whitehouse's request for unanimous consent for the Senate to pass the Protecting Seniors' Data Act of 2025.

I agree with my colleague that Federal Agencies must take all necessary steps to safeguard the personally identifiable information entrusted to them by the people they serve.

Along these lines, the Commissioner of the Social Security Administration, SSA, who was nominated by President Trump and confirmed by Senate Republicans last month, has spent his career protecting personally identifiable information. He has also committed to doing the same as Commissioner of the SSA.

However, legislation is not needed to request a Government Accountability Office, GAO, audit on a specific topic of interest.

Additionally, the Comptroller General, who leads the GAO, testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee earlier this year that GAO is already conducting a review of DOGE's access to agency systems, including at the Social Security Administration.

During his testimony, the Comptroller General also stated that GAO will issue public reports to the Congress on its findings from these reviews.

For these reasons, I object.